Breathless Moments

I am so glad it's Friday, I can't even see straight!

I have to tutor at the school soon, then it's off for the mammogram. I had one six months ago, but it was just to check the one where I had a lump, and was my final "6 month one". If all is clear today, I shouldn't have to go back for a year. Whoo Hoo!

As a reminder, be sure to schedule your mammograms or remind those you love to do it.

*hugs flist*

Thank God it's Thursday.

Yes, you read that correctly. I'm actually glad it's Thursday.

This week has been no prize for fun things I've had to do, and I'm honestly glad it is about over.

I'm ready for the weekend in the worst way. I'm being pampered this weekend -- time for my dye job. I have an appt to get my hair colored, and I'm looking forward to sitting and having it done.

This weekend we have to hit the science fair stuff pretty hard -- It's due on the 3rd of April, but everything is due -- Showboard, oral report, written report. Times Two Kids. All the "research" is done, we just need to work on write-ups. And I need to see who can type what. It would be easier if these two were twins. At least the work would be identical. If I'm going to help with double the work, it would be nice to have the same crap for both kids.

/end whine.

I was in a really blah mood yesterday. And I don't know why. I've been doing 2 jobs at work this week -- someone on vacation, and the woman who is suppose to do this job in the first place, refuses (and the boss is non-confrontational), so it's left to those of us that can pick up the slack. The one gal actually does the job almost all the time. But she's out of town this week, so I'm doing what I can to help. Fortunately, it's been a slow week for me, relatively speaking.

I am now done with most of my CAP (College of American Pathologists) work until April. Which is good.

Homework hasn't been horrible this week, which has been good, but both the older two did have major science tests. That I hope they passed. *fingers crossed*

Other than that, it's been dull. *laughs* My life is rarely dull.

I have done a spot of writing -- I wrote 2 ficlets for the community, kaleidoscopefur .  They will be posted tomorrow for my favorite werewolf's birthday. *smooches Remus* .  They are Remus/Tonks.  One is PG, one is R and one follows the other.  They are about 1300 words combined.  Just little ditties.  But hey, it's writing.  *smooches* aggiebell90 who gave them a quickie glance so that I don't embarrass myself too horrible by my idiot mistakes. And she says she loves my R/T stories, so extra *smooches* for her for making me feel all warm and fuzzy about my writing.  I needed some warm and fuzzy vibes.

I'm not sure why, but R/T is coming easier to me than H/G.  So, R/T are getting a lot of action in my corner right now.  Of course, they're thrilled...

...and the kids are on a two hour delay.

Which made my morning a bit interesting...because someone had to stay home with them.  Guess who volunteered was elected. So we are leaving around 9 to drop the youngest at the sitters and take the others to school.

Which makes me between 2 1/2-3 hours late for work.  and I still have to leave early to get the boys off the bus at the end of the day.

I do have to say, our school and the public system we are a part of very rarely ever delay school.  They rarely close for weather, and it's even rare that they delay.  I think in the seven years I've had kids in school, I think we've only delayed 3 times.  We've closed about half a dozen times. I think what happened today was it's been so warm that the road crews thought that the snow would hit the roads and melt.  I think it did that at first, but it then got well below freezing, and the roads quickly froze.  So there was no preventive salt put out, and now they're trying to catch up.  Almost every school in the area is delayed.

So, I'm home, drinking a cup of coffee, catching up on email.  I bleached my sink, started a load in the washer, and started my dishwasher, in addition to finishing up the dishes that can't be put in the dishwasher.  I also starte Tortellini Soup in the crock pot. It's amazing how much I can accomplish with an extra couple hours at home.

The boys are playing until it's time to leave.

I'm definitely not someone who can come up with original titles, that's for sure.

Well, the morning went a bit better at home, with the young 'uns cooperating. Of course the eldest thinks he "knows it all and is the parent" wanted to do safety patrol outside with no coat on. In 40 degree weather. Nope. He was torqued off because I made him put his coat on.

Whatever. He lives his life torqued off at me because I make his live miserable. He's not said that, I'm just sure he thinks that.

My job is done then.

In other news, he came home telling me that he and his friends are starting a chess club at school and that it will be after school and the principal has approved it.

My questions: Who's the advisor (parent or teacher) and how do you think you can work this in?

 ( Continued rantings about my eldest )

( Work Scientific Jargon -- enter at your own risk! )

And it wouldn't be an October day without me asking you to click on the link to support mammograms.  Please do.  They are way behind their goal of clicks for the month of October.

I am, at the very least, a bit more cheerful today than I was yesterday.  Joshua brought home papers yesterday, and they were all "decent".  One C -- the rest were A's and B's.  That was a good thing.  Both boys had a bunch of homework yesterday -- Josh had more than Matt, primarily because Josh has a band meeting tonight, plus choir, so he won't have time to complete anything due on Friday.  He has to turn in a rough draft of his Amphibian report on Friday to be checked, and he hadn't started it as of yesterday (he had the research, just nothing written).  Yeah...he didn't budget very well (report was assigned two weeks ago).

Matt is doing remarkably well with most of his assignments.  He has a ton of work to do, but he can do most on his own, with very little help.  The one subject he's having issues in is Social Studies and it has to do with Maps and Map reading.  He can't get the N-S-E-W concept down.  And we've been also working on Latitude/Longitude Northern/Southern hemisphere and Eastern/Western Hemisphere.  The last about threw me for a complete loop.  I'm looking at this map thinking, "huh? I don't remember this."  I'm going to try to find some map activities on the 'net and have his tutor work with him on it.  He has everything completely backwards.

On a good note, he did really well practicing his spelling words (usually a dreadful subject for him), and he did really well studying for his vocabulary test.  Last week, Joshua aced his spelling pretest, so he didn't have to take the final test.  He has his pretest today, and we are hoping he aces this one, so he doesn't have to take the final on Friday.  He is a really good speller, so I would imagine he'll take very few final tests this year for spelling.

Today is the start of the school choir.  I have two in it this year.  Matt has decided to join, too. It meets an hour after school on Thursdays. Band starts in fifth grade, so Josh wants to join.  He and Mike will be going to the band meeting tonight and finding out the details.

I've got my hpgw_otp  number challenge written and back from aggiebell90. I hope to get it ready to post either today or tomorrow.  I did two of them, and may just go ahead and post both (I had only one number).  I hope to work on a couple other stories I've got brewing.

Spent the day with the 4 year old at the Water Park. It was fun, and we had a really good time. We got back in time to meet the other 3 at the school bus (an important task), and went to take Matt to tutoring, only to find he hadn't brought home is Homework Folder. So we cancelled tutoring, and headed to the school. Got the folder, headed home and completed the due assignments.

Welcome to the school year.

...and update on a regular basis...

"It's raining, it's pouring,
The old lady's not snoring..."

Although she wishes she was. *sigh*

It is raining here today...and we needed it.  It's suppose to be cloudy, rainy and gloomy most of the week, so it'll at least green things up around here a bit.

Son #2 is starting back at tutoring today.  *sigh* I'm not ready to be in the whole school ratrace again (see post from yesterday).  He's excited though, so that's good.  And he's really proud of himself -- he's done well in reading this summer -- he finished GoF and has started OotP.  He "reads" them with the tape -- he follows along in the book.  This actually helps his reading skills a lot.  We started last summer with doing this -- his 2nd grade teacher had read to the class each day, and Matt loved it.  So he wanted to read SS last summer.  We bought him a little personal cassette player, the books on tape and a paperback copy and off he went.  He finished SS, CoS and half of PoA last summer.  He finished PoA, GoF and has now started OotP, and wants to read all the time -- he's my video game addict.  So this has been a good thing.  He wants to read this through the school year, although he can't take his tapes with him to school, so he'll take another reading book for free time to school, but he plans on reading every Friday night and the weekend to finish up OotP.  It's fun to see him excited about reading.  We'll see what happens once school starts though.

Other than that, I'm laying low from inspectors.